Describing last Saturday night at Koinonia is a toughie. So let me back up a bit and note that Lakewood played host to the Christians in Theater Arts Conference earlier in the day. What that means is that the upper crust of thespian talent was in town for a slew of workshops and fellowship. What it meant for us normal folk was that we benefitted inordinately from the spillover of not one, but two incredible performers as part of our gathering.

First up was comedian McNair Wilson. Not sure how much advance notice McNair had about the topic of discussion at Koinonia that day, but I still have to marvel at his capacity to tie into it with his own unique narrative. That topic was "Seeing Yourself as God Sees You." Wilson, who covered the material in a far more entertaining manner than I can even think to offer, discussed his time at the 1996 Olympics, where he met an American kayaker who finished 6th and came back to the Olympic Village depressed over the finish. But, as Wilson saw him, that put him a far cry better than the rest of the entire population. And upon learning that the kayaker had a World Championship event the next year at the same river, Wilson notes that the man (Rich Weiss) finished second.

Of course, a bit of backstory uncovered via a bit of googling after this message. One part sad, the other a bit more uplifting. Weiss passed away in 1997 while kayaking. That's the bad. But the good is that Weiss was part of a group that is credited for putting American kayakers in an elite group due to rigorous year-round training on some of the harshest training courses in North America (perhaps a contributor to Weiss' death, no doubt). Today, Weiss is memorialized in statue form for his efforts to improve the rank of American kayaking.

Needless to say, Wilson couldn't have picked a better subject for the topic at hand. The man truly has a great comic style, also. I headed over to see what goods he had available for sale. I mentioned a book previously, but what really caught my eye was a 2-hr DVD of various comedians (including Wilson). I'm told by Wilson himself that at one point, the MC loses control of the event and it's all comedians riffing free range style for a good bit. Note to self: take more money to church next time.

The second helping for the night was a dramatic performance by Ingrid DeSanctis, who's gotten plenty of national attention for her playwright talents. She wove three different segments into one performance - a 3-person play relating her experience growing up with various weird church moments and rediscovering church life later on; a spoken word segment reflecting her thoughts on singlehood based on another play she had written; and a 1-person dramatic performance that I'll cover in more detail in a bit.

On the whole, watching DeSanctis perform was a treat just due to the level of talent. Lakewood has a good core group of incredibly talented actors and actresses as it is, but to see DeSanctis perform is to witness the bar being set a good deal higher. The first segment of her performance was obviously one that I can relate to, albeit from a different angle than hers. Hers was a more fundamentalist upbringing that pushed her interests outside of the church. Mine was more of a staid, boring, officialistic church life that led me to believe there had to be something more engaging about Christianity once I was born again (which was a good bit after I'd last set foot in St. Stephen's Episcopal Church back in Mississippi). Still, the aspect of returning to church, and finding a fit that overcomes our doubts, our fears, our qualms, our ... well, everything ... has to be a wealth of material that has yet to get it's due in terms of coverage.

The second segment, I'll be honest ... wasn't my cup of tea. Part of that's due to spoken word performances having a built-in element of snobbiness built into them. Dunno if I can even explain that, but I know it's not due to the performer in this case. I believe it just has to do with the setting ... a performer sitting still, reading from notes, and forcing us to sit there reflecting on them when we can darn well read them ourselves if put in front of us. That aside, I do take heart in one comment from Ingrid's reading - something about seeing life in black and white and the alternative being not to see the world in terms of grays, but living life in color. I like that analogy. I think I'll steal it.

The final segment that I alluded to started off as a reflection on the old cooking mag question: Which five people, past or present, would you invite to dinner if you could have anyone over. Ingrid turned it around by asking which five people would you not invite to dinner if they were the last five people on earth. The point being to identify how we sometimes turn our own back on Christ's teachings by failing to forgive. It was the most powerful part of the performance and I regret that there's absolutely no amount of justice I can do to it with a few days to forget details.

Would but all Koinonia services be this well-done.